Super Jellyfish

I’ve been trying out Plaxo the past couple of days. I am an extremely lazy person when it comes to updating my address book and I usually just try to label emails with “Contact Information” if I get an address update. And I have a stack of business cards with a rubber band around them in my desk drawer at home..

Otherwise, my contacts are all over the place, in my email, written on scraps of paper, etc.

I also use Yahoo! Address book,but again, I’m super lazy about updating it.

So I decided to try out Plaxo, since I’ve heard good buzz about it and I’m not totally happy with Yahoo.

I only used the online version of Plaxo. I know the intent of the application is to have a downloadable toolbar that sort of adds on to Outlook so that you can sync your contacts with Outlook, but I don’t really like to mix my work Outlook and my personal address book. Obviously the worlds collide very often, but I would prefer not to put the contact information of my best friend from elementary school into work Outlook.

So I imported my contacts into Plaxo from Yahoo! and the cool thing was that it immediately found about 20+ contacts and updated their information. That’s really cool — for example, some people that I had totally forgotten about had changed jobs or whatever and now I have their latest information!

Unfortunately, I’m not sure if Plaxo is the tool for me. I like to scribble little notes about contacts in my address book. Since I have a bad memory, I’ll write down things like how I met the person, what I thought of their service (if say it is a dentist or something)… but Plaxo Online doesn’t let you search your notes!

For example, I’d labeled several people “headhunter” or “recruiter” by typing that in notes, but when I searched for “headhunter”, nothing came up.

Another feature I wish Plaxo had was the ability to group contacts into categories, similar to what Yahoo can do. That way I can have a group for say “health services”, “moving services”, etc.

I’m not sure that Plaxo was built with these features in mind, but since I’m looking for the ideal address book/information manager, I guess I’ll have to keep looking.

I am now considering switching back to Yahoo, since even though it’s cumbersome to manually update contacts, at least I can group contacts and search easily.

How do you manage all your contacts? Is there a quick and painless strategy?

“In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice there is.”

Costco’s CEO, Jim Sinegal, is a hero! The NYT had a recent article on the wonder that is Costco.

“Despite Costco’s impressive record, Mr. Sinegal’s salary is just $350,000, although he also received a $200,000 bonus last year. That puts him at less than 10 percent of many other chief executives, though Costco ranks 29th in revenue among all American companies.”

Why does Wall Street think that it’s okay for CEO’s to make millions and millions and that wages for the employees of the company — the people who really make the company function — should be paid low wages?

“Emme Kozloff, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, faulted Mr. Sinegal as being too generous to employees, noting that when analysts complained that Costco’s workers were paying just 4 percent toward their health costs, he raised that percentage only to 8 percent, when the retail average is 25 percent.”

The Analysts are upset (and short-sighted) since they feel Costco pays workers too much:

“Costco’s average pay, for example, is $17 an hour, 42 percent higher than its fiercest rival, Sam’s Club. And Costco’s health plan makes those at many other retailers look Scroogish. One analyst, Bill Dreher of Deutsche Bank, complained last year that at Costco “it’s better to be an employee or a customer than a shareholder.”

What does Sinegal have to say?

“”I’ve been very well rewarded,” said Mr. Sinegal, who is worth more than $150 million thanks to his Costco stock holdings. “I just think that if you’re going to try to run an organization that’s very cost-conscious, then you can’t have those disparities. Having an individual who is making 100 or 200 or 300 times more than the average person working on the floor is wrong.”

And even Mr. Dreher himself admits:

“… so many people love the company. “It’s a cult stock,” he said.

Is the purpose of a corporation only to make money? Why can’t a company also provide useful services and products to customers? Provide a livelihood and purpose for the employees? And make the company a better place, while also making enough money each year to continue along sustainably for many years to come?

• Amusing website dedicated to feeding Lindsay
• NYC subway + Google Maps upgraded [onNYTurf]

  Like the other site, but this one connects the dots.. neat

• Singer launches career on eBay [BBC]

  “”I kind of understood how the industry worked in terms of the royalties scheme, so I put up an auction as an individual saying that if you invest £3,000 in me, I’ll give you a quarter percent of my life’s earnings in music.”

  Interesting!

• U.S. to offer Doctos Free Electronic Records System [NYT]
  Finally! Since doctors are so under-capitalized and most lack scale, most small physician practices are unlikely to benefit from spending large sums on information technology… I’m so glad Medicare is doing something about it! This should make the healthcare industry much more efficient and save lives; _if_ it gets implemented and adopted.

Research Changes Ideas About Children and Work [NYT]

Fascinating article in the New York Times about child labor in developing countries.. you must read it!

“When Americans think about child labor in poor countries, they rarely picture girls fetching water or boys tending livestock. Yet most of the 211 million children, ages 5 to 14, who work worldwide are not in factories. They are working in agriculture - from 92 percent in Vietnam to 63 percent in Guatemala - and most are not paid directly.

“Most working children are employed by their parents rather than in manufacturing establishments or other forms of wage employment,” two Dartmouth economists, Eric V. Edmonds and Nina Pavcnik.

“When he started working on child labor issues six years ago, Professor Edmonds said in an interview, “the conventional view was that child labor really wasn’t about poverty.”

“Recent research, however, casts doubt on the cultural explanation. “In every context that I’ve looked at things, child labor seems to be almost entirely about poverty. I wouldn’t say it’s only about poverty, but it’s got a lot to do with poverty,” Professor Edmonds said.”

(more…)

Happy Birthday Disneyland!!! [Disney Blog]

Disney Blog writes a letter to Disneyland… sorry this is a bit cheesy, but..

“There’s been a lot of celebrating going on. But I’m afraid the real real reason for the happiness has been lost amid the corporate boardroom battles, budget issues, marketing gobbledygook, and the need to appease the behemoth your legacy has become. But don’t worry, we fans remember you. We know that it’s your birthday and we still care… But it was only made possible through the vision of one man. One man who wanted to have a place where families could vacation and enjoy activities together. A place where the simple truths and hard facts about America and what it means to be an American could be explored and enjoyed. One man whose dream became reality and whose vision is now in our hands. “

“If any man stopped and asked himself whether he’s every held a truly personal desire, he’d find the answer. He’d see that all his wishes, his efforts, his dreams, his ambitions are motivated by other men. He’s not really struggling even for material wealth, but for the secondhanders’ delusion — prestige. A stamp of approval, not his own. He can find no joy in the struggle and no joy when he has succeeded. He can’t say about a single thing: “This is what I wanted because I wanted it, not because it made my neighbors gape at me.” Then he wonders why he is unhappy. Every form of happiness is private. “

- Howard Roark, Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)

• Delicious review of Per Se..
  Makes me hungry!!

• Nanny gets fired for blog… then the parents write an article about it for the NYT

  link to NYT article

• Saved from a traffic ticket by Google Maps

  Wow, how exhilarating and suspenseful!

• Microsoft’s new technology will downgrade images on your computer.. watch out for Longhorn [Engadget]
  

  “So what will happen when you try to play premium content on your incompatible monitor? If you’re “lucky”, the content will go through a resolution constrictor. The purpose of this constrictor is to down-sample high-resolution content to below a certain number of pixels. The newly down-sampled content is then blown back up to match the resolution of your monitor. This is much like when you shrink a JPEG and then zoom into it. Much of the clarity is lost. The result is a picture far fuzzier than it need be.”

Article on living in SF vs. New York City.. [SF Chronicle]

Cool quote:

“One day, I happened upon a commencement speech by Anna Quindlen, a graduate of my New York college: “You cannot be really first rate at your work if your work is all you are,” she said. “Get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger house. Do you think you’d care so very much about those things if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon or found a lump in your breast? Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze over Seaside Heights, a life in which you stop and watch how a red-tailed hawk circles over the water or the way a baby scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a Cheerio with her thumb and first finger.”